March of the Machine Commander decks bring with them the return of Planechase, and that means new Planes to explore! We’re going to look at each of the new planes and give them a rating based on the very scientific process of “what I think.”
All right, fine, there are some actual criteria I’m looking at. Each plane will get rated in three categories, receiving a score between 1-5 for each: Fun (does this make the game more fun to play?), Impact (how big of an immediate effect will going to this plane have) and Chaos (how does the chaos effect affect the game). So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
The Caldaia
Fun: 3
Impact: 3
Chaos: 3
This will vary a bit depending on how your deck is built. If giving creatures haste for a one-shot hit or filling up your graveyard helps you out, this is fantastic. If you’re a slower deck or don’t run many creatures, this doesn’t really hinder you at all — but it doesn’t do much for you either.
So, a 3 rating across the board, right down the middle. Moderate-to-good upside, not much of a downside, seems perfectly fine.
Enigma Ridges
Fun: 4
Impact: 3
Chaos: 2
Giving a Land Tax effect to everyone except whoever has the most lands is a pretty good leveling effect, although putting the lands into your hand rather than onto the battlefield tapped limits how immediately useful the effect is. Whoever is in the lead on lands is still going to be able to stay ahead if they can keep hitting land drops as well.
But it is a galvanizing effect, especially if someone was falling way behind. The chaos effect is serviceable, but rather unexciting in most cases.
Esper
Fun: 2
Impact: 2
Chaos: 3
There are some cases where this plane will be bonkers for a player or two in a pod, and then others where it might as well be blank for the entire table.
For a lot of decks, this will possibly let you get some rocks out a turn faster, whereas it can boost the potential for artifact-based decks through the roof. The chaos effect ranges along the exact same lines, but can potentially close out a game on the spot, so it gets a slightly higher rating.
The Fertile Lands of Saulvinia
Fun: 4
Impact: 4
Chaos: 4
Look. Commander may be moving away from haymakers and battlecruiser Commander is a thing of the long past for a lot of tables. But if you want an experience somewhat close to that, The Fertile Lands of Saulvinia can give you a pretty good approximation, launching the table into the late game extremely fast.
The Chaos effect only gets a point off for the fact that some other planes’ chaos effects are a little lackluster, but it’s exactly the kind of craziness I’m looking for out of Planechase.
Ghirapur
Fun: 3
Impact: 3
Chaos: 2
This is an odd one. Depending on the deck, this can be fantastic, turning rocks and whatnot into real threats that your token army can crew up for big blasts of damage out of nowhere. But if you aren’t equipped to really take advantage of it, this doesn’t really do much of anything. Regrowing an artifact is a nice chaos effect, if a little simple.
The Golden City of Orazca
Fun: 2
Impact: 3
Chaos: 4
Commander decks are usually able to Ascend without breaking much of a sweat, so getting the full effect out of this plane isn’t too tricky. You need to be able to push damage though to get much out of the static effect, which can be a pretty tall order in a lot of board states, especially in the scrum of a mid-game.
The chaos effect can be an absolute game-changer, allowing you to cheat on mana costs and sidestep countermagic effortlessly.
The Great Aerie
Fun: 2
Impact: 2
Chaos: 2
Pumping up your smaller creatures can certainly be useful, but there’s enough spot removal, blockers, board wipes, bounce and situations where having a slightly bigger creature just doesn’t do much that I’m not too keen on this one.
Having the chaos effect be a fight isn’t the worst, especially if you can take out a key utility creature, but it’s not often going to be too exciting, and chaos is the place for exciting things to happen.
Inys Haen
Fun: 2
Impact: 2
Chaos: 2
I mean, it’s fine, I suppose — just rather unexciting. Regrowth effects of various sorts on chaos seems to be a well that Planechase planes like to draw from. I just find them a little ho-hum, especially for an effect named “chaos.”
Ketria
Fun: 3
Impact: 2
Chaos: 4
See, now, this plane makes total sense to me. You want to design the main effect to have an impact but not necessarily completely derail things, and this falls squarely into that category, allowing for voltron builds to get the maximum value without being totally useless for everyone else.
However, the chaos effect is where you can have some fun, and this sort of effect is wonderfully chaotic without becoming a headache. Just a nice, solid extra-base hit of a plane.
Littjara
Fun: 2
Impact: 3
Chaos: 3
Everything about this plane is absolute catnip for creature-theme decks, adding and pumping relevant creature types turn after turn. There’s not much more to add here — this plane does one thing and does it very, very well, but doesn’t have a ton of flexibility, otherwise.
Megaflora Jungle
Fun: 3
Impact: 3
Chaos: 2
If you have any kind of creature token theme or subtheme in your deck, then this is exactly the plane you want to see. This will only tend to pump really small actual creatures, but tokens can get pumped no matter how large they are. For some decks, this will be mostly blank, but there’s not much of a downside to it either.
Naktamun
Fun: 3
Impact: 3
Chaos: 2
This one feels pretty fair. Obviously it favors creature-based decks, but it kind of works counter to reanimation strategies and helps more fair decks rebuild after board wipes.
The chaos effect helps fuel the primary effect, while also helping out those same control decks find answers as the creature decks refuel. Not the most exciting design, but a tidy one.
New Argive
Fun: 2
Impact: 2
Chaos: 3
Go go commander Voltron builds! This can obviously do a little more than that, but that’s where this plane will shine. For everyone else, it’ll be either blank or marginally useful.
The chaos effect can help you find combo pieces…if those combo pieces happen to be legendary creatures or artifacts. This is a good chaos effect, if not exactly the most chaotic.
Norn’s Seedcore
Fun: 5
Impact: 1-5
Chaos: 5
Listen. Look. Listen. This is silly. And wild. And absolutely everything I want out of Planechase. This will make for wild stories and weird board states, and I am here for it wholeheartedly.
Nyx
Fun: 2
Impact: 3
Chaos: 2
Some decks will love this, some will hate it and the player who has been burned one too many times by stax-like prison decks and is packing all the enchantment removal will finally have their day. The chaos effect is nice in that it’s very random and chaotic, but there’s a lot of times where it will do pretty much nothing.
Paliano
Fun: 3
Impact: 4
Chaos: 2
Now this is a good example of a very simple effect done well. Any time you can introduce Monarch into the game, I happily encourage you to, as it promotes combat and politics like almost nothing else.
The chaos effect is about as good as it can be while not being terribly impactful, doing good work defensively even if you aren’t in a position to attack for the monarch.
The Pit
Fun: 3
Impact: 3
Chaos: 3
This, I like. A nice choice between a smaller creature with no downside or a larger creature with potentially terrible consequences.
This feels like 90s Magic to me in a way I find normally hard to pinpoint. The chaos effect is fine, although doesn’t feel terribly chaotic, and is easy enough to play around, which feels antithetical to the concept of chaos.
Riptide Island
Fun: 3
Impact: 3
Chaos: 3
Old-school commander players who remember being in pods with sliver decks will feel their eyes twitch a bit. I’ll fully admit to bumping up the fun and impact rating a full point purely for nostalgia, but this is my list and you can’t stop me.
The chaos effect gets better over time, but until you reach a critical mass of sliver tokens is likely not going to do too much in most situations.
Strixhaven
Fun: 4
Impact: 4
Chaos: 3
Hey, hey, Wizards? More effects like this please. Demonstrate is a good multiplayer mechanic that leans way into the social aspect of Commander, and I love it. So anything that gives it a moment in the sun is something I’m going to like, and I feel like getting to regrow instants and sorceries is more helpful to decks playing them than regrowing random permanent types on other planes.
Ten Wizards Mountain
Fun: 1
Impact:1
Chaos: 2
This feels like the smallest possible effect you could put on a plane and still print the card. The chaos effect at least lets you possibly get some Commander damage in, I guess? I don’t really have a lot here. This feels like the first cut you make when figuring out which plane cards to use.
Towashi
Fun: 3
Impact: 3
Chaos: 2
Only specific decks really want to be here, but this is a pretty good payoff if you happen to be playing one of those decks. The chaos effect allowing you to spread the counters around your creatures is very nice, as a single piece of removal won’t entirely erase the effect. Relatively average grades all around here.
Unyaro
Fun: 4
Impact: 5
Chaos: 3
Now this is hilarious, as it could just as often be a massive downside for you as much as it can protect your army and buy you time. If some other player has some engine out that doesn’t involve creatures, they love this plane and want to stay here forever while everyone else is scrambling to roll the planar die as fast as they possibly can. There is a nice tension with the chaos effect here, overall just a very solid design.
Valor’s Reach
Fun: 2
Impact: 2
Chaos: 4
I get exactly what this plane is going for, I get why it’s designed this way (Kylem is the Battlebond plane) — it’s just a very specific restriction to try to work with in a way that doesn’t really encourage a ton of politicking outside of extremely particular circumstances.
The extra combat bit in the chaos effect is really where the meat of this plane lies, as there’s a lot of decks that can do silly things with an extra combat step.
The Western Cloud
Fun: 3
Impact: 4
Chaos: 3
The fun rating here is splitting the difference between what you feel when you’re on this plane and what your opponents feel. This plane feels unfair, for the simple reason that it definitely is — all your combat math is super simple, all your blocks require little to no thought and the chaos both gives you mana and can potentially wipe the board of all your opponents’ small creatures? Sign me up.
The Wilds
Fun: 1
Impact: 1
Chaos: 3
This is on the same level as Ten Wizards Mountain. I don’t think you could do any less as a primary effect and still justify the cardboard. The chaos effect can actually impact the board, so it gets a small bump, but this really isn’t anything exciting.
End Step
Planechase Commander is one of the sillier formats you can play, and I highly recommend you give it a shot at least once in your Magic-playing life. Whether you want to pick up the full precon set from March of the Machine with all these planes (and more, as these are the new ones) or just want to pick up the individual planes to throw into your games, we’ve got you covered at Cardkingdom.com!
Chris is the Associate Media Producer at Card Kingdom. He would like to apologize to his son for not holding onto more cards from when he first started playing, as that likely would have paid for college. He enjoys pretty much all formats of Magic, but usually ends up playing decks that make other people dislike playing those formats with him.